We need to get some female fingers on board. The stats show 49.5 men for every female. Do the math ladies, we need some of the wifes and female friends to join us in this wonderful land of buses and travel and interior decorating etc. And over 227,000 hits in April, WOW! think of the connections that they could make. So guys, lets get the ladies on board

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I may have started it, but you'll have to finish it! Located in So CA (Orange County)

You gotta get Christy Hicks over here. She'll alter the percentages. She and Nick would have a lot in common with both being in HVAC thing. She has two (maybe still 3 buses) and is using a GM bus a right good bit. We'll see what we can do for an invite. Must find Christy! JR

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JR Lynch , Charlotte, NC87 MC9, 6V92TA DDEC, HT748R ATEC

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”

Yeah, I'm a lowly hvac/plumbing technician! Obviously, the pay is so high in those fields that we can afford brand new conversion busses. . .not! Yes, we do have three, count 'em, three busses, AND a motorhome. Long story, basically it goes, buy a motorhome, buy a bus, start a conversion, buy another bus, start over again, get tired of using motorhome while waiting for converted bus, buy a temporary bus to temporarily quell the n"eeds" while converting "real bus", look at first bus and motorhome thinking, crap, we've got to SELL some of this stuff. . . . take a trip to get away from it all!

Hey Christy - glad you made it over here. I've seen your entertaining posts on one of the YGroups, but don't use Y very much because I can't stand the technology.

I hope you will become active here because you have lots of good perspectives to share. I remember your post about changing your mind about the interior rivets - I made the same decision, arrived at in much the same way you did!

Thanks for the welcome Chuck, but I gotta tell you, sooner or later we'll probably quit doing such dumb stuff and then y'all will be bored !

Glad to hear I wasn't the only one who decided to get a little lazy and leave those darn rivets in place. It's just too bad I was hauling butt down the side of that bus so far, making such good progress, before Larry got back and brought it to my attention that he had every intention of remounting those panels. As I stood there and gazed down the long side I still had left, and realized I would need to double the count to include the other side, I sure lost my enthusiasm for the whole grinder routine! Once we popped the first panel and saw that the insulation was in that good of shape and basically filled the cavity well, well, you know the rest of the story. . it was "Sorry babe. . you wanna, um, rivet those back for me?!? Think I'll just put this here grinder down and find some other trouble to get into!"

Another change of heart involved the idea of running the wiring behind those panels. It was pointed out by a person much smarter than me (yep, he still is a busnut, so not THAT much smarter), that the odds are you will need to access some or all of your wiring at some point in the future, so it is best to leave it as accessible as possible when converting. Since I plan on dying in this bus. . .well, maybe not soon, and maybe not exactly "inside the bus", you know, dying. . . (I guess I mean I want to still own the "BigBus" when I die), well, anyway, I thought that was a good point.

Anyway, thanks again for the welcome, Excited to be here, Christy Hicks

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If chased by a bear, you don't need to run faster than the bear, just faster than your companion!

Thanks Phil, glad to see you here too. As I indicated earlier, I hope that we eventually get to the point where we don't do so many dumb things to give you guys stuff to chuckle over.

Course, then there's the "baby grand in the bay" incident of late, which definitely wasn't a mistake, even though it was kind of funny! She's sitting pretty in my front room, waiting for the piano tuner. I still like my office manager's suggestion that we should have just left it in the bay, and we could pull into the campgrounds as a "rolling piano bar"!

Christy

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If chased by a bear, you don't need to run faster than the bear, just faster than your companion!

Welcome Christy and Larry...and thanks for the check! I'll need about $400 bucks to fill the bus fuel tank. I'll check the mail tomorrow! We're leaving Wednesday to spend a few days "pickin and grinnin" at a music festival and then run down to Dallas' happening. Hope fuel doesn't go up another 20 cents before I fill up!BTW, here we go again....disparaging rooftop ACs! Now my feelings are hurt. I'm over it.Be sure you clearly explain the co$t$, time, expertise and ducting requirements involved in installing almost anything other than rooftops. For those that have any doubts, rooftops are noisy (my dometics are not really noisy except on high...which is rare)..but they are easily installed, efficient, cheap to buy, cheap to replace, easy to replace, readily available anywhere in the world, interchangeble from brand to brand in the same mounting holes, available in heatpumps, and you can stand in front of them and rapidly cool off after romping outside on those really hot days! They also run on 120VAC. You'll see rooftops on million dollar entertainers. Basement ACs are sophisticated and nice to have for those with the skills and $$ to deal with them. Rooftops are nice if you want to conserve $$ and git'Rdone. Cheers, JR

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JR Lynch , Charlotte, NC87 MC9, 6V92TA DDEC, HT748R ATEC

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”

You see, what he didn't tell you, out of politeness, is that I'm a picky old hag! ha ha.

Let me start the story properly. . you see, long before I owned a bus, or a motorhome, as a child of the tender age of 22, I decided to buy my grandparents' travel trailer and car. The second time I pulled the trailer, I pulled it from Minnesota to Oklahoma, hit a bridge (but that's another story ), made it to Oklahoma, eventually married an hvac guy, and that's where it all started. Clear as mud, right? Let me try again.

You see, the travel trailer didn't have an a/c unit on it. It wasn't even wired for one. Larry just happened to have a window unit that was split in the middle. . .actually split so that you could shut the window down on it, so he got the wise idea to split it completely. He mounted the condenser on the rear bumper (I won't even BEGIN to tell you how many times that was practically drug off ), and mounted the evaporator portion inside the cabinet near the dinnette (our bed). Whaaalaaaa. . we had central air!

Along came numerous motorhomes with rooftops, and none were anywhere near as quiet as that central air on that old 18' Trailblazer Travel Trailer (built like a brick silo, which was good considering the bridge hitting and other hazards that poor unit had to navigate!)

Then came the bus. . .yep, "THE BUS". . the "ONE AND ONLY", the "ONLY GOING TO DO THIS ONCE BUS"! So, yes, it's more work, but we've got central air. . .course, we're hvac people, we SHOULD have a quiet, comfortable hvac system. Did I tell you I don't like air blowing on me? Did I tell you I don't like to hear the a/c unit? You know, the crabby old hag thing again. For the same reason, we routed the generator exhaust up and out the roof. . .get that noise and those diesel fumes up and away where they don't bother other people. . . .I figure some of them are crabby old hags just like me .

Actually, I agree with JR. . .for most people, you just can't beat the rooftop units. Easy and cheap. Then again, as he probably could tell you, lucky for the world I think, I'm just not quite like most people! Christy Hicks

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If chased by a bear, you don't need to run faster than the bear, just faster than your companion!

Don't feel alone, My dad made central air the same way in his 4104 back in 1979. We split 4 10,000btu whirlpools to make 2, and mounted the condencer trays in the old bus air conpartment, and the evaps, 1 built in over the bed, 1 built in over the driver. It was pretty cool. thoose whirlpools were abundant too. We would only replace the fan motors for customers in the 18,000 btu units and up. So we had alot.

I remember late 80's, he then installed rooftops, only cause we had no more whirlpools around to chop. [we stopped working on the window shakers]Me, I'll stick with the basement Hp's. mainly because I service alot of Cruisairs on high end yachts and comm. fishing boats, and of course cheep for me!